“I can easily understand why it should puzzle you that a person of my intelligence, I.Q. 207 super genius, should devote his valuable time chasing this ridiculous road runner . . .” – Road Runner
Besides, her last test came back negative.
When I was growing up I recall reading a short story that was, to me, particularly horrifying. In the story, a group of colonists arrives at a planet light years from Earth. All is going well – the planet is habitable but not inhabited. The colonists set the ship down and begin to prepare the planet for people. And they begin making babies to inhabit the planet, but in the usual way, not using space robot wombs or anything.
But, there is something wrong with the babies. They are ugly. And stupid. And grow quickly, hitting puberty at about age four. The scientists work frantically trying to figure out what is causing the problem. Is it some alien virus? Something to do with the journey itself? They come up with no good answers, but in their searches determine that the children really look more like a human ancestor from millions of years in the past than modern humans.
Uh-oh.
Then they get the bad news. Earth sends them a message (from six years in the past) that all human babies on Earth are now being born ugly and stupid, too. Earth thinks that the colony is the last hope for smart humans, so they have to make it succeed.
Oops.
One of the colonists gets a bit philosophical, and compares humanity to locusts, who often stay in a less aggressive form for decades, and then burst out in the big, hoppy flying plague across thousands of square miles, devouring everything in their wake. Humanity’s true form, reckons the colonist, is the fuzzy stupid pre-humans, and once humans spread among the stars, it made sense to get stupid again so that we didn’t destroy ourselves. In the end, all that’s left on the new planet are the pre-humans. And the wolves. The colonists released the wolves so that the pre-humans would have something to select off the stupid pre-humans, so they could get smart again millions of years in the future.
Depressing.
The name of the story is The Locusts by Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes, and it was published in 1979 and was nominated for a Hugo® award. This story has bounced around my mind since I first read it, though I had forgotten even the author until I was assisted by some fine folks on Twitter®. It is available in Larry Niven’s anthology N-Space, which is probably where I read it for the first time.
The story got me thinking about the concept of how civilization influences intelligence. And other questions: how important is intelligence? Is it better to be intelligent or not? Would my I.Q. be higher if I did it in metric?
But maybe the most basic of all of these questions is: what is intelligence?
Intelligence is the ability to process information quickly with sufficient working capacity to create useful connections with previous information. Intelligence really is measurable by I.Q. tests, and, oddly, is predicted by reaction times – the smarter you are (in general) the quicker your reaction times. It’s as if the brain pathways move faster for smarter people. Sadly for those that like to make fun of smart people, the reality is that they’re generally healthier and have a pretty good ability to communicate if they want to. Generally.
Subliminal advertising is illegal, but what about subcranial?
The way to think of intelligence is that it’s like your height. Your DNA at the moment of birth determines what your maximum height will be, unless your environment screws it up. You can’t study yourself taller. You can’t “think and grow tall.” No matter how much you stretch every day, your maximum height is your maximum height.
Intelligence is like that, too. Studying doesn’t help your I.Q., but it does increase your capacity within that maximum intelligence. No matter how bright the puppy and how often you work to teach it to talk, it’s never going to read quote any Shakespeare except for Romeo and Juliet. Your dog is a philistine. But just as environmental factors can stunt your height, environmental factors can make you . . . not as smart, which is why Doritos® took most of the lead out of their Nacho Cheese and Lead© flavored chips. Most of it. How can you have lead-flavored chips without any lead?
It also turns out that intelligence is very, very important if you’re considering wealth. Here is a graph showing the relationship between GDP and the I.Q. of various countries. It’s based on 1998 data from Lynn and Vanhanen, but I doubt that 2019 data would be much different, except for China, which has quite a high I.Q. but a low 1998 income. I’ll let you wander around the Internet for more information if you’d like, I’m not planning on writing about it here – I have to get to sleep tonight sometime. I will admit I was as utterly shocked as anyone could be the first time I saw this data – my preconceived notion was that the average I.Q. of the world was more or less 100, which is clearly refuted by the following graph.
What’s the difference between getting into USC™ and being a wealthy nation? To be a wealthy nation you have to have a good I.Q.
So at least one question appears to be answered – although you might end up being smart and poor, you’re never going to be dumb and rich. Poor countries are poor because they’re not smart. This answers my first question – is intelligence important? Yes. Intelligence in nations has been shown to be correlated strongly with lots of good things: economic freedom, savings, self-employment, education, literacy, interpersonal trust, and long lives. Low national I.Q. has been correlated with lots of things we don’t like: corruption, murder, and big government.
I’ll throw out that high I.Q. nations also have more suicide and lower birthrates – the only two negatives that I saw in my (brief) review of the literature I could find.
The original starred Einstein® and Hawking™, but they argued after Einstein© said a radioactive cat had 18 half-lives and had to find new actors.
Next Monday I anticipate reviewing a new book on the subject of intelligence, At Our Wits’ End by Edward Dutton and Michael Woodley of Menie. Dutton and Woodley have worked on a disturbing theory . . . that you’ll have to wait until next week to hear more about. But don’t expect any hairy pre-human babies. Because nobody expects hairy pre-human babies.
Sleep? What’s that like? I have been reading you M-W-F and now I cannot sleep because of all the light leaking out of the inside of my head!
Clearly the data is the plot is non-linear. How dare you use a linear fit!
Heh heh. I actually did play around with other data fits, but decided the linear was more pleasing to the eye. That being said, I think you may be on to something – there may an I.Q. level below which the only form of possible government looks like Idiocracy (the movie).
Possible typo. Did you mean dumb and rich?
There are lots of dumb and rich people, but of course they don’t stay rich, and they usually didn’t have anything to do with becoming rich. If you start out life as rich, and just happen to be dumb, you can be dumb and rich. But your childen most likely will be poor.
If you’re starting out poor, and are already dumb, your chances of being rich are whatever the powerball odds are.
Grrr, gonna fire my proofreader
You are, of course correct. Thank you. Will fix when I get to my computer. Thanks.
And on a civilizational basis, the only way to be dumb and rich is to have a LOT of natural resources per capita, and then there are a lot of kids, then the nation is poor again . . . .
And on a civilizational basis, the only way to be dumb and rich is to have a LOT of natural resources per capita, and then there are a lot of kids, then the nation is poor again . . . .
(and thanks again for finding that typo!!!!)
You are most welcome, sir. Happy to help!
It is endlessly amusing that people who clamor endlessly about humans being just an advanced product of evolution freak out when you suggest that different races have evolved differently when it comes to intelligence. I am not a geneticist but it seems that when you look at the national outcomes of the different races, some seem to be consistently more successful while others are not.
And don’t forget that civilization molds us as well – but that’s next Monday’s topic.
Nature and nurture. Genes and memes. You’ve got to have positive qualities in both for a population to rise much above “nasty, brutish, and short.”
Does ‘rich’ refer to ‘more Federal Reserve Promissory Notes than the median’?
Could rich be an abundance of deep resilient relationships?
In my case, rich means lots of spare time sitting on the porch tossing tennis-balls to the dogs on Tu-Thur-Sat-Sun. While relishing my off-moments to enbrightening my craniousity on M-W-F.
Word Of The Day == relishing.
PS:
Some folks think ‘rich’ is ‘lots of lead-filled brass in easy reach’. I don’t judge. However, BOONDOCK SAINTS is genius; merely holding the DVD case enbrightens my days.
Nicely done. I probably need more precious metals – silver, gold, and lead.
But in this case you can infer that large buckets filled with federal reserve notes will eventually have the value of large buckets.
The Saints were on a mission from God.
I looked twice, but i didn’t see the “this is wilder…this is your brain on wilder…any questions?” meme.
Heh heh – I do recycle, but I tried to be fresh today.
My sister and her husband are both intelligent. He used to head a department in a large university-you already, being highly intelligent might see where I’m going-and she worked in the medical field. He’s written a half dozen books on his specialty which are now used nationally as textbooks. His “hobby” is dissecting every word of the last century writer, James Hardy, and has even written some sort of play about him. Her field involved anatomy.
So my friend riddle me this. They live in Chicago with a mindset that weapons are bad and besides that’s what the police are for. Despite the horrors of socialism(communism) even with a current real time example happening just a bit to the south, they think it’s a grand idea for faceless PsTB in DC to make decisions for 350 million of us. They have a few good moslim friends so natch, what’s happening in Europe is ca-RAAA-zee right wing distortion. And they’ve been to s Africa and loved it. And really, isn’t it wonderful that so many latin Americans think it’s peachy here * besides, don’t forget, diversity is out strength.
I could go on at length. If a higher IQ is the ability to process information and use it to not just avoid getting eaten by a saber tooth tiger but to catch the damn things & teach them how to juggle bowling pins, WTF is going on with 1/2 of our population living delusional lives?
More coming! As noted, (on another comment) super-high I.Q.’s can lead to . . . weird behavior. The people might not be able to adapt to reality as well as someone with a more modest I.Q. – say 115 to 130. May.
The other part is indoctrination – with some folks, leftism has completely replaced religion.
Great comment!
The Left would have us believe that poverty cause stupidity and crime. It’s quite clear that stupidity causes poverty and crime. This is why, no matter how much money we throw at black neighborhoods and schools, they never improve.
Oh, come on. Poor is the new nobility! The poor reek of virtue!
Heh heh – I forgot all about the nobility! My bad. (edited – omitted word)
I’ve been poor. It’s not noble or virtuous. Neither is it dishonorable nor contemptible. It’s merely uncomfortable and hungry.